Yesterday afternoon Fred and I decided to work together to fix a rip in his jeans. After seeing this post by Toni - that I bookmarked forever ago - I knew that was the most fun fix! He cut the felt and I did the stitching (it was a little awkward because they are skinny jeans!)

Finally I managed (just in time) to do my last bee block this month. It's for Diane in the Simply Solids bee. She asked for any star in a star block so I made the 'star within a star' block by Brioni Greenberg from the Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters book. It worked out so well although because of the grey days what looks like blue here is actually more of a purple but you get the idea:

I did something bad. Not illegal bad but quilty bad. I had some fabric I didn't love, I made a very quick quilt top thinking of adding another baby quilt to sell at the PTA fair and then got to quilting it. REALLY badly, puckers and all. It was shocking. Worse than my first quilt ;)

I tried to think of ways to make it look better but everything I could think of would have made it worse and wasted more of my time!

I cut off pieces of wadding I could keep and some of the backing fabric and then threw the lot away. A total waste. Of my time. Of fabric too, yes. A big lesson learnt. I will sew what I love, experiment away and try new things but I will not hurry, I will not make something for the sake of it. I may make things I don't love in the end but if I'm honest I hated it from the start and I won't ever be starting something I don't even like. Confession over.

There was something bugging me about that missing 'g' on Bloglovin'(g) and after Helen and a few people mentioned Feedly I decided just to see if I could get it to work - I'd tried previously but it didn't like my operating system but give them time... the Feedly team have obviously been working hard and it now works awesomely on my very old (it's about 85 in computer years) macbook. So yeah!!

It had all the features I missed from Google Reader that I couldn't get on Bloglovin'. I may switch between the two until I am totally convinced but honestly from just a day of using it I think I'm a Feedly convert!!

I've added a Feedly button too for those of you using that to make it easier to follow me (although 70 something people already do - thanks!).

Oh and Lois likes spinach with cheese, yeah!

Fred is off school today (teacher's strike) and tomorrow (teacher training) so he's hanging out with me and Lois. This morning we did some gardening and repotted his tomato plant then we made chocolate banana muffins. They turned out pretty good! Not sure what adventures we will get up to this afternoon :)

As soon as I got a copy of Patchwork Please by Ayumi Takahashi I thought of these panels for this project. I'm sorry to Ayumi that I didn't make her beautiful patchwork but here's my version of the apron and I'm joining in theZakka Along 2.0.

I used some interfacing on the fabric before lining it and I only quilted in between the panels.

For the main fabric of the apron I used a tea towel (it works so well!!).

It came together really easily, I even left the selvedge edges on the ends of the ties, so it was super fast to do.

Unfortunately I only had a 5yr old helper to take a picture at the weekend. So here it is in all it's blurry glory:

Yeah and again:

I tried lying down, better but not great!

He made up for it though with these totally gorgeous shots he got of his sisters:

I am trying to work on my applique skills and this little project was great practice for me!

I made this tea towel from the book 'Patchwork Please!' and am joining in the Zakka Along 2.0.

I chose to just do the little pictures to represent 'breakfast, lunch, dinner' on one tea towel and as much as I love seeing all the beautifully bound ones I really haven't had time to bind it.

I chose some of my favourite scraps since I'm going to be looking at it a lot!

In other applique news I finally made this Apple Leaf block for Jodi in Scrappy? Sew Bee It. The tutorial is fantastic and it was so fast putting this together. I love it and think she's going to have a gorgeous quilt - her inspiration is beautiful too.

I got my own block in the post this week, an amazing Rose Star from my incredible friend Nicky. We did our own little swap because we are working on the same size and it seemed like a fun thing to do. I adore the vibrant fabrics she picked and I love that my quilt will have a bit of her work in it!

She also sent this cute card and 'space invader' filler shapes for my quilt - how very kind you are!! You have now also named these little creatures so thanks for that too ;)

I initially thought about hand quilting it but with so many other projects on the go I decided to machine some concentric circles to echo the background design on the fabric.

I quilted round the heart and then drew round a plate to get my first circle. I used my quilting guide and walking foot to echo the circle.

I found I had the perfect thread in one of my Aurifil sampler packs. I'm trying to use these in different projects, it is really great trying the different weights. I used the variegated 12wt cotton #4648. It was fabulous in my machine and I used my usual 50wt Aurifil in the bobbin and the back looks great too!

I chose to do a solid scrappy binding and I think it works really well. I used Silent Cinema by Jenean Morrison on the back, as I had some left over from the Owl Love You quilt.

Those who follow me know this too well. I am now following blogs that have it on and every time I go to enter a comment the blinking word verification pops up and I don't bother. I'm pretty sure I've asked people to turn it off but they've ignored me. It sucks for them that they don't get to read my comments.

Now I'm starting to think about unfollowing people because it's so ******* annoying. I don't know what else to do?! I often read blogs on my phone and there's just no way I can read the silly words and often the full words don't even show up on my phone screen!! The time it takes is also annoying.

I do really like Bloglovin' now (though the name still annoys me - add a 'g' people!!) and would recommend it as an alternative. If you have no idea what I'm on about or you are still using google reader head over to this post by Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts - she explains really clearly how to make the move!